232 
MOTH. 
may be found in the Cyclopaedia of Mr. Chamhers 
and many other similar publications, and is nearly 
as follows. 
The art of manufacturing Silk is said to have 
been first invented in the island of Cos, by a 
Avoman of the name of Pampltilis the daughter of 
Platis, The discovery was not long unknown to 
the Romans. Silk was brought to them from 
Serica, where the insect itself was a native; but 
so far were they from profiting by the discovery, 
that they could not be induced to believe so fine 
a thread to be the work of an insect, and formed 
many chimerical conjectures of their own on the 
subject. Silk was a very scarce article among 
them for many ages: it was even sold weight for 
Aveight with gold ; insomuch that Vopiscus in- 
forms us that the Emperor Aurelian, who died 
A. D. 275, refused the Empress his wife a robe of 
silk, which she earnestly solicited, merely on ac- 
count of its dearness. Others however, with greater 
probability, assert that it was known at Rome so 
early as the reign of Tiberius, about A. D. 17. 
Galen, who lived about the year of our Lord 173, 
speaks of the rarity of Silk, being no where then 
but at Rome, and there only among the rich. 
Heliogabalus the Emperor, who died A. D. 220 , 
is said by some to have been the first person that 
Avore a holosericum, i. e. a garment entirely of 
silk. . The Greeks of the army of Alexander the 
Great are said to have been the first Avho brought 
wrought silk from Persia into Greece, about 323 
A'ears before Christ ; but the manufacture of it Avas 
